Charles Handy article on the most effective educational path to becoming a manager. Handy begins the article discussing how he gave up the title of Visiting Professor at his home institution twenty-five years ago. He proceeds to reflect on how business schools and the MBA degree have changed over the years, and how there are over one hundred degree courses in business and management in the UK alone. Handy then argues that if a more realistic and broader view of business education were realized, the business degree would be rendered obsolete, stating that he could make a good case for requiring a business course to be a part of the last year of schooling for everyone, or, at minimum, part of the first year at university. Restricting business education to a postgraduate pursuit is, from his perspective, unnecessary and unfortunate. Handy then distinguishes between business pursuits and learning to manage, which he perceives as two different things, the latter being more individual to each person and based on their actual experiences. Explaining that, in retrospect, he is amazed he thought there could ever be one universal theory of management, he states that managers and executives have to work out their own solutions to their predicaments; that is, they need to learn from themselves. In this, Handy predicts a future division of business education between “business studies” and “management learning.”
Handy, Charles B Master of business administration degree Business schools Management Management science Business education Business students Business, culture and change Institute of Directors Management education
Source
Charles Handy article on the most effective educational path to becoming a manager, 1993; Charles Handy Papers; Box 20, Folder 7; 1 page
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